Winfield Scott Stratton

Winfield Scott Stratton was born on July 22, 1848, in Jeffersonville, Indiana, and moved to Colorado Springs in 1872, where he worked for years as a carpenter and contractor. Every summer for seventeen years he prospected the Colorado mountains, studying mineralogy and metallurgy between seasons, and every summer he came home no richer.

That changed at Cripple Creek. On July 4, 1891, Stratton staked the Independence and Washington claims on Battle Mountain above the town of Victor, ground others had dismissed. The Independence proved to sit on one of the great gold veins of the world. By 1894 Stratton was the Cripple Creek district's first millionaire, and in 1899 he sold the Independence to the London-based Venture Corporation for $10 million, one of the largest mining transactions of the age.

Wealth did not much change his habits, but it did reveal his convictions. Stratton bankrolled down-on-their-luck prospectors, gave Colorado Springs land and public buildings, modernized its streetcar system, and quietly paid for coal, groceries, and bicycles for working people. At his death in Colorado Springs on September 14, 1902, the bulk of his estate endowed the Myron Stratton Home, a residence for the indigent old and young that still operates today. Eccentric, reclusive, and generous, Stratton remains the model of the prospector who struck it rich and gave it back.